


red ink

by pallasjoanna



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Ambiguous Alya/Nino, Background Relationships, Ensemble Cast, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Pining LadyNoir, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-22
Updated: 2015-11-22
Packaged: 2018-05-02 20:46:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5263001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallasjoanna/pseuds/pallasjoanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Soulmates. You’ve heard it all before: the stuff of fairytales and romance, your perfect other half, or your one true love and sometimes more than one. On the other end, we’ve been told it’s too mainstream, it’s bowing down to the universe or ignoring free will just because you believe in a bunch of words that appear on your skin. But this isn’t going to be some stuffy speech that’s going to tell you what to believe about soulmates. Instead, why don’t we listen to what others believe?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	red ink

**Author's Note:**

> This is a continuation/side story of my soulmate tattoo drabble [here](http://pallasjoannas.tumblr.com/post/132597792208/imagine-a-ladynoir-soulmate-tattoo-au). It gives some background on Adrien's and Marinette's soulmate tattoos and how they met in this AU.

[At first, red hair falls into the screen before it is righted up. Then it zooms too closely into a pair of green eyes. Alya grimaces and steadies the camera before she backs away, this time with a grin on her face as she speaks.

“Soulmates. You’ve heard it all before: the stuff of fairytales and romance, your perfect other half, or your one true love and sometimes more than one. On the other end, we’ve been told it’s too mainstream, it’s bowing down to the universe or ignoring free will just because you believe in a bunch of words that appear on your skin.

“But this isn’t going to be some stuffy speech that’s going to tell you what to believe about soulmates. Instead, why don’t we listen to what others believe?”]

\--

The moment Alya steps into the bakery, Marinette immediately yanks her to her bedroom at a speed that leaves Alya feeling as if she left a part of her soul outside. “Hello to you too,” she says, plopping down on a cushion while Marinette clicks and clicks at her computer. “Care to tell me this Very Important News that you’d like to share?”

Alya hasn’t been her best friend for two years for nothing, so Alya already has a vague idea of what it is. Aside from miscellaneous stuff, there are three things that could usually inspire this kind of fervor in Marinette: the first being fashion, the second is Chloe acting even more bourgeois than normal, and the third—of course—Adrien Agreste.

And when Marinette furiously jabs a finger at a picture on the monitor, Alya thinks that if ever a betting pool exists for this sort of thing, she’d be as rich as Gabriel Agreste.

But she’s rather offended at what she sees.

She isn’t referring to the grainy picture of Adrien with his naked back turned toward them but at whatever slimeball paparazzi or eager gossipmonger with no sense of journalistic ethics whatsoever took it in the first place.

“Gossip sites—“ Alya enunciates each word like she’s holding a dead rat. “—are the scum of the earth, and I really hope there’s some other reason you went looking for this other than to raise your blood pressure.” She clicks to see the full article while Marinette paces around the room and rants, incensed as she is.

“I know! They can’t just do that because whatever happened to respecting people’s privacy while they’re dressing up—and heck, that’s just—“

The page loads. Alya blinks at the title.

‘ _Adrien Agreste’s Soulmate Mark Finally Revealed?!_ ’

“What.” She scrolls back up to the picture, and true enough, right where Adrien’s fingers are splayed over his left shoulder as if he was trying to cover it from the spying camera, she can see some black blurs that don’t seem to be just shadows from the lighting. Alya tries to decipher the words—who wouldn’t be curious?—but the blurs are, well, blurry enough.

She doesn’t bother with reading the rest of the article and turns to Marinette instead. “Okay, girl. Be honest with me,” she says with a pointed look at Marinette’s left arm. “Is this just about somebody nearly getting the jump on Adrien in a dressing room?”

Marinette huffs. “What do you mean? Of course it is.”

Alya waits, raising an eyebrow for good measure.

“Fine,” Marinette admits, a bit petulantly, but her shoulders slump soon afterward. “I don’t think—“ She gestures towards the screen. “Alya, I don’t think I’m his soulmate.”

Alya frowns. They’ve already gone over this matter last time. And Marinette didn’t seem so concerned about soulmates back when Adrien transferred in and just a few days later, she admitted to Alya that she might have a bit of a crush on him already. That’s despite the fact that the most she’d been able to say to him involved stuttering and stammering and letting Alya talk to him instead.

Marinette rambles on about how she’s compared her first words to Adrien to the picture and comes to a conclusion that what she said is just too short for it to be what his marks say. “I mean, I sort of knew when he didn’t react when I talked to him the first time—“

“Does it really matter if you’re his soulmate or not?” Catching Marinette while she’s just about running around the room is a challenge, but she manages. Alya puffs her friend’s cheeks like a goldfish. “Marinette Dupain-Cheng, you’re brilliant even if you do get a little scatterbrained at times, so you shouldn’t let a few words get you down—including soulmate tattoos.”

“Mffph—“

“Oh sorry.” When she lets go, Marinette moves to sit on a chair. “Now, is this the part where you cheer up and say ‘You were right all along, Alya’ and then go forth to make Adrien fall madly in love with you?”

Marinette sticks her tongue out. “No.”

“Now you’re just being stubborn.”

“It’s not that. Honestly, I don’t care that Adrien isn’t my soulmate. I’d still like him even without this.” Marinette points to the covered skin of her left arm and sighs. “But what if he cares about that? What if no matter what I do, he’ll always want his soulmate anyway?”

There’s a very easy solution to this. Alya puts her hands on her hips. “So ask him.”

She’s a bit worried when Marinette nods as if she’s already considered this. Marinette is one of the most creative people she knows but veers a lot into overthinking things. She still hasn’t forgotten the cellphone incident. “Yeah,” Marinette says. “I just need a better conversation starter than ‘Hey I sort of saw your stolen pic, so what do you think about soulmates?’”

“Definitely a mood killer.” But in her mind, Alya is having A Moment, and she just loves it when the pieces start putting themselves together. She grins. “I might have an idea though.”

\--

Phase One of her plan has already been in motion since even before Marinette mentioned her problem.

Last week, the journalism club put up posters about a school contest with categories for news, feature, photography, and documentary, and it only took a second for Alya to choose the last one. She’s been doing that sort of thing on Ladyblog for several months now, so it should be a piece of cake, right?

Wrong.

She wants to make a video about Ladybug and Chat Noir. She really really does. She still has that grainy, shaky video she took when Ladybug first appeared in Paris, and by the time Chat Noir appeared, she’s already collected a lot of decent footage. It would be a piece of cake to thread all that together into a documentary recounting the tales of the Defenders of Paris with a voiceover from yours truly.

But after consecutive lunchtimes wherein the contest turned out to be a hot topic, she suspects that everyone and possibly their mothers have the same idea as her. Alya has no doubt that she can add her own spin to it, but then she might lose the contest just because the judges are bored of seeing the same clips fifty times in a row. She’s been looking for other interesting subjects for her entry until Marinette conveniently dropped one into her lap.

Soulmates. Of course. Who doesn’t have an opinion about soulmates?

The next day, Alya finds herself alone at lunch, so she goes over to sit with Adrien and Nino instead, only that Nino is sitting alone at their usual table, too.

“Does Adrien have a fashion show coming up?” Alya asks, sliding into the seat across him. Adrien did in fact just had one a couple of weeks ago, and she knows because Marinette knows.

Nino pauses in taking a bite out of his sandwich and shakes his head. “Nah, dude just forgot something at his place. How about Marinette?”

“Errand from her parents.” The camera on the table catches her eye, and Alya leans forward, ready to enact Phase One-point-Five. “So, Nino, I heard you’re joining the journalism club contest. What category are you in?”

“…You’ve got something up your sleeve.” But he still answers, “Photography.”

“Not documentary?”

“Already tried that last time. Figured something more chill this year might be nice.”

“That’s nice—” Alya drawls, excited at how well everything is lining up. “—Because mine happens to be documentary, and since we’re not in the same category…”

She has the pleasure of watching realization dawn on his face, and she can feel a wide smile on hers. She holds out a hand across the table which Nino takes.

“Deal,” he says. “Next time we both do a movie though, I get dibs on the script.”

“But I still get to criticize it.” And that’s how Alya gets an editor for her contest entry.

On to Phase Two.

\--

Naturally, Rose thinks the world about soulmates.

“It’s beautiful,” she says with a dreamy look on her face. “There’s someone out there who the universe thinks is just perfect for you, so it gives you a way to find them someday.”

Rose doesn’t keep her soulmate tattoo a secret. Through the camera, Alya sees her words curling over her collarbones like a necklace. Almost like an announcement. She turns the camera to Juleka at Rose’s side who happens to be very intent in doodling something into a notebook.

“Me?” Juleka looks up when Alya asks. “I think they’re pretty rad.”

Juleka, as usual, is as concise as can be, and anyone else who doesn’t know her that well might leave it at that. However, there’s volumes in the way her hand moves to cover Rose’s on the desk, in the way a tiny smile lights up her face when Rose just about swoons.

\--

Most people get their soulmate tattoos when they’re around ten, but to find your soulmate while you’re still in school is extremely unlikely and lucky. Alya has seen the statistics. To have two soulmate couples in the same classroom—that probably breaks some sort of record.

Ivan’s mark is smack in the middle of his cheek. “Hi,” it says, and Alya has to marvel at how unhelpful that is. “I didn’t really care about soulmates until I met Mylene,” he says sheepishly. “For a while, I kept jumping whenever somebody said it.”

Mylene’s seems to be more informative. “I… got lost on my first day of school and ended up in this dark broom closet. It was really dusty, and there were spiders and scary shadows, so I ran out and bumped into Ivan.” She tucks a bit of hair under her headband self-consciously. “I don’t know what I’d do without him.”

“That’s not true, Mylene!” Ivan’s outburst nearly makes Alya drop her phone. That’s going to be one heck of a shaky clip, but she’ll have to make do as the conversation gets more riveting anyway. He takes Mylene’s hands in his, no longer speaking to the camera.  “No matter what Chloe or anyone else says, you’re the bravest person I know.”

Mylene blushes. “Oh, okay. Still, I do feel a lot braver when you’re with me.”

\--

Nathanael is one of the sweetest people Alya has ever met, and coupled with the fact that he has a crush on Marinette the size of Jupiter, she can’t help but feel a slight twinge of guilt when goes to look for him. It’s like dragging him into her plan to help Marinette score a chance with Adrien.

But technically, this is for her contest entry. Her acting as Marinette’s wingman is just a side effect.

 He scratches at the back of his neck as he thinks about it. “Soulmates? I—I haven’t found mine yet, but—“ Here, his voice gets even softer than it was before—they’re already in the library and Alya has to scoot her phone closer to him on the table. “I think it would be nice. If somebody cared about you the same way you cared about them.”

Alya is going to pretend that didn’t feel like a big arrow of guilt shot through her heart or something.

\--

When she gets back to her classroom, Chloe slams a hand on her desk and yells, “I heard you were interviewing people for the contest and how dare you not include me!” And Sabrina takes her side and nods.

Sometimes Alya wonders if Chloe is Sabrina’s soulmate because it would really explain why they’re even friends, at least, in the loosest sense of the word.

“I know who you are, Chloe,” Alya snaps. “I asked the class about it earlier and you said that it sounded like a cheap topic, so I took it to mean that you didn’t want to be a part of it.”

“At least ask me personally so I can say ‘no’ to your face!”

“Do you even hear yourself?” Alya decides to humor her, if only that she’ll go away and leave her alone. She takes out her phone. “Fine, what do you think about soulmates?”

“Ha! I’m not going to grace a peasant like you with my opinion.” With a smug smirk that Alya wants to slap off her face, Chloe walks out of the classroom even if first period is about to start anyway, with Sabrina dutifully following her.

“I didn’t want your opinion on soulmates anyway!”

And because Chloe has to have the last word, she yells back, “There’s no soulmate on earth that’s going to be worthy of Chloe Bourgeois!”

\--

“According to a study of soulmate pairs, seventy-six percent of them were found to have compatible personality types based on Myers-Brigg type index, however out of that, forty percent did not chose to enter into a romantic—“

Max’s statistics can make for a good introduction in her video. Beside him, Alix looks bored as she lounges on the bleachers, and surprisingly, Kim seems to be paying attention, nodding as Max rattles off numbers and percentages.

“So as I was saying, Kim, before Alya came by, is that your chances of being happy with or without a soulmate are statistically optimistic.”

“Didn’t feel like it when she rejected me,” Kim says.

“And Snapchatted it to the whole class,” Alix adds under her breath.

“Perhaps she accidentally said what your real soulmate is supposed to say. Or she may be your soulmate, but you’re not hers?” Max muses.

Kim rolls his eyes. “Thanks. That makes me feel a lot better,” he retorts in a tone that says he’s anything but.

“Forty-seven percent of individuals with soulmate tattoos in France reported being happy enough without a romantic relationship with their soulmate, and out of those, fifty-one percent chose not to enter into any romantic relationship at all—”

“So, I don’t speak Nerd, but I think what Max is trying to say to this big doofus over here—“

“Hey!”

“—is either the nerdiest proposal I’ve ever heard or the nerdiest friendship speech ever.” Alix jumps into the center of the camera’s field of vision. “Okay, so is this the part where you ask me about what I think about soulmates?”

“Go ahead.”

“Right.” Alix plops back onto the bleachers and props a leg against her thigh in a pose that would make Chat Noir seethe with envy. “It’s like Christmas. I’m either going to be really surprised, or I’m really not going to be, but one thing’s for sure. My soulmate’s just going to have to accept the fact that they’re never going to be cooler than me.”

\--

That night, Alya finds herself having to study late for a test the next day, and it doesn’t help that her room is humid and muggy and suffocating. She pushes her textbook away and goes to slide her window open. She looks down at the mostly empty streets. Good for those who are having a good night’s sleep already.

She’s about to go back to studying when something drops down at the corner of her eye, and at first, she thinks that maybe it’s just an oversized black cat taking advantage of her fire escape.

And then she realizes that it _is_ an oversized black cat.

“Good evening, good citizen!” Chat Noir grins up at her as he perches on the railing. “Nothing for you to get your claws out and about, just the Defenders of Paris making sure you’re all safe—“

“Stay there!” Alya dashes to her desk and grabs her phone there because, oh my god, if she can get Ladybug and Chat Noir on her video talking about their opinions on soulmates, she’ll have the contest in a bag. Not to mention it’s going to make a very memorable entry on Ladyblog. When she sticks her head out the window, Chat Noir hasn’t leapt to the other building. “Ladybug isn’t with you?”

“My lady’s on the other side of the Seine right now, but hey, I’m here.”

She can’t say she’s not disappointed, but maybe she can catch Ladybug the next time there’s some supervillain running around Paris again. Or maybe Alya can just stay up late more often. That could also work.  Gripping at her phone with her mouth, she climbs out her window and onto the fire escape, and it’s only when a cool breeze blows by that she considers that wearing pajamas to superhero interviews might not be the best idea.

Oh well.

Alya takes a moment to look for a nice angle to shoot from—a bit of a challenge on the cramped stairs. Chat Noir is helpful in this regard when he gets down from the railing and poses himself. It’s ridiculous, but it works for him, she has to admit. She puts ‘possible model or photographer’ at the back of her mind to come back to later. “So, what’s Chat Noir’s opinion on soulmates?”

The self-assured grin on his face momentarily fades. “Oh. That’s what you were talking about.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing, nothing.” He flicks his hair out of his eyes. “Whoever my soulmate is going to be, we’re going to be purr-fect for each other. I already look this great, so they’re sure to be gorgeous, yeah?”

Both a romantic and a narcissist. Alya doesn’t know what she was expecting. She’s about to tap the button to stop recording and says, “Thanks—“

“—but too bad for me I’m in love with someone isn’t my soulmate,” Chat Noir continues, not already speaking to the camera as much as she suspects he’s talking to himself.

“…Really?” Alya won’t deny that she tends to be curious when it comes to soulmate stories, even more with non-straightforward soulmate stories involving Paris’s superheroes. That would explain what came over her when she blurts out, “It’s Ladybug, isn’t it?”

His attention snaps back to her, eyes wide.

“Please, it’s obvious,” she blurts out even more. She stops the recording. For someone who’s been following them both for as long as she has, of course she’s noticed Chat Noir’s star struck gaze and single-target flirting has always been directed towards Ladybug. “Honestly speaking, are you fine with me using this clip?”

“Oh er—is it fine if you don’t? I’ll have a better answer ready next time you catch me.”

Alya shows him her phone as she deletes it. Chat Noir looks simply looks dejected, shoulders slumped, and a far cry from his earlier swagger. In fact, he reminds her so much of Marinette a few days ago in her room talking about soulmates that Alya wants to give him a hug. Or pet his ears.

Chat Noir’s communicator rings soon enough—“’Night. My lady calls,” he says before he jumps off to the next building—and Alya climbs back to her room, feeling very much like she can power through the whole night now.

\--

As it turns out, it’s only a good idea if one is willing to ingest copious amounts of coffee.

Alya hates coffee.

“Woah, what happened to you?” Nino asks, turning in his seat to face her and nudging at her elbow. “You look terrible.”

“What a way to flatter a girl, Nino.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Ugh. Let’s just say I thought it was a good idea at the time.” Alya lifts her head from the desk when she hears Marinette’s voice greeting the class. Marinette slides into her seat, looking so concerned that she’s clearly about to ask as well.

“Don’t,” Alya says. She’s about to drift into a nap when this time, she hears Adrien’s voice saying hi and hello, and she jolts back up in her seat.

She hasn’t done Phase Two-point-five yet. What kind of friend is she?

Alya leans over to Adrien and pokes his shoulder.

“Yeah?”

“You’re the only one in this class who hasn’t given me an answer yet,” Alya waves her phone. “Well, you and Marinette,” she amends with a pointed glance towards her best friend. “You both up for it?”

“Sure,” the both of them say. Adrien puts on an easy smile when she starts recording while Marinette looks like she has a toothache from the nervousness. She flashes Marinette a thumbs up and mouths, “You can do it!”

Nino puts his hand over hers and nudges her phone to point out a nice angle. She smiles gratefully at him before turning back to her interviewees. “Usual question. Opinion on soulmates?”

Marinette stays silent, seeming to want to hear Adrien’s answer first.

“Like what kind of opinion?” Adrien asks. “Are soulmates real or something like that?”

Alya cannot believe how easy he is making this for her. He’s practically begging for it. “Anything, but how about—“ She grins at Marinette. “Do you think you can love someone who isn’t your soulmate?”

“Definitely,” Adrien replies without missing a beat.

Through the camera, she can see Marinette’s jaw dropping.

“I mean, I guess I’d like to think of our soulmate tattoos as a guideline rather than a real rule,” Adrien continues and turns to Marinette. “How about you?”

“Oh, haha, um—“ Marinette starts fiddling with her hair.

 _Please take this chance_ , Alya thinks. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Nino gesturing to Marinette to lean closer to Adrien so they can fit better in the camera.

Marinette clears her throat. “I would love someone even if they’re aren’t my soulmate,” she finally says, eyes shining and her voice full of conviction, and Alya wants to pump her fist into the air. “It doesn’t matter to me if they’re my soulmate or not. In the end, if I’m going to love someone, it’s going to be because of the kind of person they are.”

“And we’re done.” Alya lowers her phone to see Adrien ask Marinette about what she said, and Nino, with a suspicious look on his face, says to her, “Did you just—“

“Try to set up our best friends together?” Alya whispers. “Sort of. Yup. Mission accomplished.”

\--

It’s nearing the tenth time that their best friends have ditched them during lunch. It’s not that Alya resents Marinette (or Nino with Adrien) for it, but ‘ditch’ just happens to be shorter than ‘left their best friends alone during lunch for important errands so now they have to sit with each other’.

Nino is scanning through the clips on Alya’s phone while she’s gingerly looking at the photos he’s developed for the contest. For the past week, she’s interviewed some students from the lower and upper classes, a few teachers, and several willing passersby on the streets. She already has an idea for the sequence of the clips, and how to tie it all together, and if reality can match her imagination, she’s definitely bringing home first place.

There’s three photos in the envelope Nino’s planning to submit: a photo of the Eiffel Tower from the bottom looking upwards into a starry night, a cool dynamic shot of their class when they had volleyball for gym with Alix as the focus, and her favorite, a photo of Ladybug and Chat Noir on the roof of the building, looking out towards the horizon of a sunset.

She remembers the day he took it. The both of them skipped the last two periods once they heard that there was another attack, and they followed the two superheroes at a distance for the better part of two hours. She was out of breath by the time they raced up to the roof deck of an adjacent building. She didn’t end up getting the follow-up interview Chat Noir promised or an interview with Ladybug since they quickly left to de-transform, but maybe Alya can do that next time.

That reminds her—“Hey, Nino.” She holds out her hand, gesturing for him to give her back her phone.

“Hm, yeah, just wondering if you wanted a fast paced video or something that builds up.” He passes her phone, and he slides his envelope back to his side, checking and double checking the photos for the hundredth time. 

Alya rolls her eyes and says, “I haven’t gotten your answer yet. Do you mind?”

He thinks about it for a few seconds. “Nope, not at all.” He waits until she starts recording before he answers. “Actually, I don’t have a soulmate tattoo.”

She is surprised, but not for the reason most people would be. “Wait, you too?”

“You too?”

“Yes!” Only her family, Marinette, and now Nino know of her lack of a soulmate tattoo. It’s the 21st century, and the disbelief and sometimes discrimination aren’t as rampant as before, but it’s a fact that she doesn’t usually share.

She’s been checking her body for the slightest hint of a word since she was ten years old. Maybe her marks were just late in appearing, maybe she really doesn’t have a soulmate. Alya was thirteen years old when she decided to stop looking.

Nino leans forward and drops his voice to a low mutter. “I haven’t met anyone without one until you. Sure, I don’t think people would blab about that kind of thing, but still—“

“I know what you mean.” Alya stops recording, deletes the clip, and starts again. “Take two?”

“Oh fine. I don’t really care much about soulmates,” Nino says to the camera. “I’m still fifteen, still in school and suffering from Math, and still too young for that—wait, that makes me sound like my grandpa.”

Alya laughs. “No take backs, you old geezer.” And for the next five minutes, Nino tries to grab her phone while she tries to see how far she can lean back without falling off her chair.

\--

[“—And to conclude, maybe the concept of soulmates always boil down to one thing: choice. This is Alya from Collège Francois Dupont, signing off!”

The screen fades to black.]

 .

**Author's Note:**

> I would have made this more ladynoir-centric, but let's be real. The love square is complicated enough without throwing a "I'm in love with someone who isn't my soulmate, so what if they don't love me back? Oops, it turns out they were my soulmate all along" kind of dynamic.
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](http://pallasjoannas.tumblr.com/)


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